Not content to let Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis corner the entire giant-monster market with 1976’s King Kong, his fellow countrymen ripped off his blockbuster with, among other titles, Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century, directed by Gianfranco Parolini (aka Frank Kramer, helmer of the Sabata trilogy). But really, the two films are vastly different; in Yeti, the big guy climbs down a skyscraper. See? Nothing alike!

A giant of a different sort, the rotund captain of industry Morgan Hunnicut (Plot of Fear‘s Edoardo Faieta, aka Eddie Faye), calls upon an old friend, the professor Henry Wassermann (John Stacy, The Headless Ghost), to assist in a “humane expedition” in Northern Canada. (Despite always wearing a cap swiped from one of Santa’s elves, Wassermann enjoys great credibility in the field.)

This expedition involves the thawing and subsequent reanimation of an ancient abominable snowman encased in ice, discovered by Hunnicut’s grade-school grandson, Herbie (Jim Sullivan, the prototype for young Fred Savage), who has been mute ever since he lost his voice in a plane crash that claimed the lives of his parents. Under the prof’s supervision, Hunnicut’s team assaults the cryptozoological Popsicle with flamethrowers to reveal the body underneath, five times taller than you or I, and preserved in “a perfect state” for all these years. Just how many years wavers from scene to scene, from “millions” to “a billion” to “1 million,” with all estimates coming from the same source, and all running square in the face of the film’s 20th-century subtitle.

For some reason, the yeti (Mimmo Crao, Sergio Martino’s Sex with a Smile) has to be revived while within a TARDIS-like contraption hanging from chains to a helicopter in flight. This works, but down on the ground, the hirsute sasquatch gets freaked out by camera flashes, triggering the unavoidable rampage; before you know it, the blood of extras is on his hairy palms. He licks them.

Also unavoidable: He becomes smitten with Hunnicutt’s hot granddaughter, the teenaged Jane (Antonella Interlenghi, aka Phoenix Grant, Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead), so he scoops her and little bro Herbie up and carries them to a private spot among nature. Along the way, Jane accidentally touches the yeti’s breast, which gets the creature so excited, his nipple inflates. The creature’s resulting grin is so wide, it looks as if he inhaled a hit of Smilex. Aroused or not, he resembles Dan Haggerty with mange (see Exhibit A).

Speaking of aroused, Jane becomes just that when the yeti combs her hair with a giant fish skeleton likely still wet from being stripped of stinky meat seconds earlier. One could argue that the public is aroused as well, once it hears of this Bigfoot’s existence; Hunnicut Enterprises enjoys doubled sales, thanks to full-fledged yeti mania through everything from yeti gasoline to ladies’ “Kiss Me Yeti” T-shirts, whose fronts are adorned with the monster’s handprints purposely at boob-grabbing level.

Because the yeti’s initial dealings with camera-snapping humans went so well (read: not), the greedy Hunnicut plots the publicity stunt to end all publicity stunts, evidently forgetting it also will end the lives of several innocent people. But, hey, a buck’s a buck! And Parolini and his fellow producers spent as few of those as possible, judging from nearly two hours of evidence. Replete with miniature models and what sounds like two songs on repeat, Giant is chintzia — pretty sure that’s Italian for “chintzy.” —Rod Lott

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After Star Wars changed the world, each part of that world wanted its own Star Wars. Italy cooked up Starcrash; Japan produced Message from Space; and Canada clocked in with H.G. Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come. Quite a mouthful, eh? Based in name only on Wells’ 1933 speculative novel, Shape is an all-around square effort (under)funded by schlock specialist Harry Alan Towers (Five Golden Dragons) and directed by Frogs’ George McCowan.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away On the tomorrow after tomorrow, according to the opening crawl, people fled Earth after the robot wars left it polluted, and colonized the moon. It also tells us that we are dependent upon the miracle drug RADIC-Q-2, which is produced only on the distant planet Delta III.

In and of itself, that is not necessarily a bad thing; the situation changes when Delta III ruler Omus (Jack Palance, Tango & Cash) decides to withhold 100 percent of the drug’s supply in order to blackmail the moon’s New Washington into making him supreme commander of the moon and Earth. Clad in a cape that makes Palance’s character look like an AARP-sponsored superhero (superpower: craps bigger’n you), he’s basically Big Pharma price hijacker Martin Shkreli. (Given that Shkreli was negative 4 years old at the time, the film indeed predicted Things to Come. Mind, consider yourself blown.)

Powered by dated Honeywell computers, the senators of New Washington negotiate neither with terrorists nor past-their-prime matinee idols in the nadir phase of their career, so whereas viewers may expect a war among the stars, the battle instead is waged — per Towers’ iron grip on the pocketbook — on the farm pasture of Québec. Among those fighting the good fight against Omus and his boxy, walking robots with arms constructed from shop-vac hoses: The Dead Zone’s Nicholas Campbell, The Boogens’ Anne Marie-Martin (her hair lively with considerable, just-been-conditioned bounce) and The Poseidon Adventure’s Carol Lynley.

Effects for this sagging space saga run the spectrum, from quite nifty to rather embarrassing. Budgetary woes weep loudest in the practical settings and costuming, particularly spinning pound-cake pans used as a torture device and protective helmets that are nothing more than inflated plastic bags placed over the actors’ heads — both examples fine for Saturday-matinee fare of the ’50s, but hopelessly out-of-touch by the high-bar standards of the George Lucas generation. Perhaps worst of all, The Shape of Things to Come fails to connect narratively; if Towers jettisoned everything from the book but Wells’ title, why settle for a tale of politics? For every minute that limps by, those robot wars of the aforementioned crawl sound all the more appealing. What we were given can be summarized by a line uttered by Campbell after experiencing Shape’s no-frills version of 2001’s famed stargate sequence: “What the hell was that all about?” —Rod Lott

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Based on the 1927 H.P. Lovecraft short story “The Colour Out of Space” without crediting it as its source, The Curse concerns the Crane family of a tiny Tennessee town. Ruled with an iron fist by asshole fundamentalist patriarch Nathan (Tentacles’ Claude Akins), the blended farming clan has worries beyond crops when a shiny, white orb lands on their lawn. Despite it looking like a Christmas ornament from last year’s Neiman Marcus catalog, they call it a meteorite. Whatever it is, the thing plops from space while Nathan’s wife, Frances (Kathleen Jordon Gregory), is plowing the field (so to speak) with the hairy, hunky (well, compared to Akins) farmhand.

Only Frances’ son and daughter, Zack and Alice (Stand by Me’s Wil Wheaton and his real-life sister, Amy), seem to notice how different — and terrible — the well water tastes ever since that gosh-durned galaxy rock invaded their property. Then the animals start acting crazy, too; Nathan’s fat-ass slob of a son, Cyrus (Malcolm Denare, John Carpenter’s Christine), is attacked by a horse, while Alice is nearly pecked to death by angry chickens. Nathan praises God for allowing apples to grow on his tree, then is horrified to discover they’re full of writhing maggots. Frances arguably has it worse: After she halves a freshly plucked head of lettuce, only to find it full of goop, a pierced tomato unloads a loose-manure typhoon onto her screaming face.

Soon, her face is newly dotted with a couple of zits that grow into an infection that suggests she caught the herp from her barnyard romp. And yet, even after they balloon into scabby boils, no one dares address it. Just as no one complains about Frances’ fried chicken dinner being marinated in salmonella soup. Just as no one shares their anecdotes about the trick fruits and vegetables. Just as Nathan never says to his wife, “Hey, remember when I caught you in your nightie outside with that hairy, hunky farmhand? What in tarnation was that all about?” Just as no one asks Zack, “Isn’t there anything on the TV other than Hee Haw?” Just as no one ever says, “Holy hell, we sure do have one hot li’l filly of a next-door neighbor!” She’s played by Hope North (Linedancin’ U.S.A.), and not even Cooper Huckabee (Tobe Hooper’s The Funhouse) as her husband seems to notice … especially when she’s gussied up in silky purple panties to seduce him!

Even by science-fiction standards, logic in The Curse is lacking, as are the makeup effects on the simplest usage. (For example, as Alice begins to inherit her mother’s “complexion,” it looks as if the little girl just self-applied blobs of calamine lotion with a cotton ball.) Let’s make sure no one fails to tell you that the 1965 Boris Karloff vehicle Die, Monster, Die! is a far superior adaptation — histrionic title and all — than this, the directorial debut of Daredevil actor David Keith and produced in part by The Beyond’s Lucio Fulci and Beyond the Door’s Ovidio G. Assonitis. The latter name sounds like a true curse: a south-of-the-belly-button disease I never wish to contract. Symptoms of Assonitis include violent itching, uncontrollable oozing, extreme discomfort while seated and an appearance by Hazzard himbo John Schneider. —Rod Lott

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Popular culture owes Larry Buchanan a mountain of debt, because if not for the Texas-based filmmaker’s Mars Needs Women, what other dialogue could MARRS possibly have sampled for its smash hit, “Pump Up the Volume”? (And then, by extension, that Christian Slater movie would have been titled something generic like Teen Rebel DJ.) But Buchanan’s film itself? It’s no damn good.

At the United States Decoding Service — NASA Wing, mind you — decoders have been busy for three days decoding coded messages from outer space. These “mysterious signals” all say the same thing: “Mars needs women.” Further explanation is delivered via Dop (Tommy Kirk, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini), one of a crew of five clean-cut Martian men who have come to Houston to enact Operation Sleep Freeze, in which they will recruit (read: abduct) five unmarried, but way-beautiful women for a mission of repopulation. Exclaims Dop to those aforementioned decoders, “We are in earnest! The life of our planet depends upon this!”

When Buchanan (The Naked Witch) isn’t busy padding his 83-minute picture with so much stock footage of military aircraft taking off and landing (not to mention a loudspeaker that shows up so much, it deserves a supporting credit), he shows us the Martians collecting their prey like so many Pokémon: a stewardess, a homecoming queen, a stripper (Hip Hot and 21’s “Bubbles” Cash, per the credits) undulating like a Bill Ward cartoon in the ever-livin’ flesh.

But in the midst of their rapey plan, what would happen should Dop — gasp! — fall in love? Enter Yvonne Craig (the same year she debuted as Batgirl to TV’s Batman) as a prim-and-proper scientist. That their date takes them to a planetarium is a foregone conclusion since it allows Buchanan to make it to feature length by working in what amounts to a slideshow on the red planet. Strangely, it is more compelling than the movie’s actual story. —Rod Lott

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What’s in Hong Kong’s The Cave of Silken Web? Try seven spider demons, in the shapely form of sisters clad in eveningwear from the Roy G. Biv collection, with color-coordinated webs to match. Still, I could not tell them apart — a difficult task made all the more taxing by the insistence of director Ho Meng-Hua (The Mighty Peking Man) to cram the entire septet into the frame at once and as often as possible.

Based on Chinese folklore, this kiddie-matinee fantasy pits these vixens as eager to feast on human flesh, which is why they get so worked up when they see a monk (Ho Fan, reprising his role from 1966’s Monkey Goes West) approaching with three travel buddies-cum-bodyguards: a fairly worthless friar (Tien Shun, also back from West), a massively titted pig man (Peng Peng, ditto) and the ever-acrobatic Monkey King (Chou Lung-Chang, who was not returning, but came back for the next sequel, 1968’s The Land of Many Perfumes). From there, the simple story points are placed on a virtual carousel as the spider women try to capture and consume the men, while the men try to evade capture and save those not as fortunate, while also not becoming breakfast. With trick spells on both sides cast as fast as spittle flies, misunderstandings are used for strategic purposes, as if an episode of Three’s Company were infiltrated by magic.

For example, the sisters initially attempt to lure the men into their cavernous death trap by giving it a proto-HGTV makeover — the first of the film’s musical numbers. (Oh, I didn’t mention the flick is also a musical? Well, it is.) As optical effects do their best to suspend our disbelief, the ladies sing about their dastardly plan. Here, check out the lyrics that begin this sick beat:

I’ve turned the cave into a gorgeous hall
With all these splendid decorations
Luxurious furniture
And all types of antiques
The garden is adorned with rare plants
There are boys and girls waiting to serve
It’s taken on a whole new look
It’s a deadly trap to kill them
To kill them

Game, set, match, Kanye.

Many of the effects — like the friar leaping from ground to mountaintop or Pigsy’s fruit turning into a rock mid-chomp — are achieved through the ol’ freeze-now-and-edit-later method. In rare instances, this works really well, with no moment better than the Monkey King being electrocuted into a skeleton as he tries to bust through a giant web. (Incidentally, this occurs 34 seconds into the trailer and 34 minutes into the movie. Hashtag congruence!) This being a Shaw Brothers production, a fair share of martial-arts battles breaks out, with our heroes and villainesses sparring with swords on a stick — a war of weapons the soundtrack depicts with the cacophony of your kids banging pots and pans.

Still, the sets are a marvel and the pervading wackiness translates into the near-irresistible. As arachnid chick numero whatever says, “Don’t dismiss this monkey, sister.” —Rod Lott

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